Melty Crayon Coloring

We ended up with a crayon melted in a cup holder in the van, last week, and while I wasn't thrilled with the mess, I did notice the children's fascination with the squishy, spreadable nature of their once solid crayon.

Yesterday, I finally got around to putting out a few, partially peeled, crayons in the sun, on top of a piece of tinfoil, for the girls to experiment with. It was a hot afternoon (in the mid-80s), so it only took about a half an hour for the crayons to start to melt.


The trick is leaving the crayons out long enough soften, and and melt a little, but not so long, that they become a liquid. Some of ours were meltier than others, those were great for making thick, smeary lines.


The more solid crayons could still be used to draw normal, thin lines with, but it took a lot less pressure to draw nice, dark lines, and the crayons glided easily across the paper, in a very enjoyable manner.


Some of the crayons were so soft, that they bent, and broke when the girls started to use them, so they had to use their fingers to smash, and smear the pieces, which was surprisingly, not as messy as it sounds.

Neither of the girls ended up with color on their hands, and when they were done coloring, I simply stacked up their pages, and wrapped up the melted crayons in the tinfoil I had laid them out on, and we were ready to go back inside. But, we still had that satisfied feeling, that comes with messy art.

It's great to be a homeschooler.